With the drug trade booming in Sydney — shootings at a high, bikie warfare spilling into the streets, and the value of drugs flatlining along with the economy — it comes as no surprise that more and more celebrities are tucking into recreational drugs. Cocaine, meth, marijuana, speed and ecstasy are no longer hard to come by, if ever they were, and drug dealers have never been more socially acceptable. Dealers no longer have to hide in back laneways or trail through the city in clapped-out old cars.

Enraged secularist elites are digging in their heels in a bid to get God out of the National Curriculum and out of our public schools, insisting that religion should be taught in the home and not in the classroom. But the review of the National Curriculum provides a welcome opportunity to ensure Australian kids are given every chance to grow into the best 21st-century citizens they can become.

Parents who remove their children from school to take holidays when flights and accommodation are cheaper will be targeted in a major crackdown on student absenteeism. Education bosses have given instructions to principals to investigate any student who misses classes for 10 days or more without a good reason. Principals have complained that their charges have been withdrawn from class to take trips to theme parks in Australia and overseas when they were legally required to be in class.

The top US law official has said state attorneys general are not required to defend laws supporting traditional marriage. Eric Holder – who heads the Department of Justice – made the comments despite saying such actions should be “rare” and only done in “exceptional circumstances”.

After three days of federal parliament wallowing in the grubby and exaggerated politics of corruption, ministerial misdeeds, point-scoring and calculated attempts to damage credibility for longer-term political gain, Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt pinpointed the heart of the issue this week when he asked: “Where is parliament’s moral compass? “

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has announced a new monthly ministers' forum with Papua New Guinean officials to coordinate investigations into the recent violence on Manus Island and oversee the resettling of refugees in PNG.

The Greens and a Sydney MP are behind a push to ensure married people who undergo a sex change can have their birth certificate altered. Greens MLC Mehreen Farugi and Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich say current laws do not allow a married person to alter the record of their sex. It is claimed the law forces a transgender married person to choose between divorce - to allow their gender re-assignment to be recognised - or having an inaccurate birth certificate.